Millennials Are The New Work Martyrs

The start of a new semester comes with a ton of emotions. The dread sets in as soon as I pay the tuition for the next semester.

Rage quitting and moving to Himalayas seems viable when my bank statement shows a withdrawal of $8500. That’s 3 months of my life right there, gone in a flash. Then there is the good stuff. You get to see all your buddies, your comrades in battle against the tyrannical world.

One of the topics that always comes up is work. That makes sense since that’s all you want at the end of day, right?

Who Works More?

So there you are, talking about work and then it turns into a debate: who worked the most?

Turns out us millennials are obsessed with work. Or rather I should say obsessed with working long hours. We take pride in being “work martyrs”.

A recent study undertaken by Project: Time Off reveals some interesting statistics. 43% of millennials responded that they believe themselves to be work martyrs. Work martyrs are primarily young workers that believe that not taking a break will translate to better professional success and thus they value hours worked over true productivity.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself that “I feel guilty for using my paid time off” or “I don’t want others to think I am replaceable” then congratulations, you just might be of one of us work martyrs.

It’s not ideal but that’s just how things are. It used to be that people would spend all their lives working at the same company without skipping a beat.

Now, it’s hard to even imagine holding a job for more than a handful of years at a time. You could say that’s because us millennials want to be challenged more. We want to do more and learn more.

I think the frequent shuffling stems from a variety of reasons. It’s because we are constantly on the defense.

The world is just beginning to recover for arguably the worst economic crisis of the last few decades which means that job security is just not a thing anymore. 9-5 is nothing but an urban legend at this point.

If our bosses expect us to work 10 hours a day, we put in 11 with a sliver of hope that our dedication would be recognized. Enough to bump us up when the time finally comes. At the very least, not getting chopped when the next round of downsizing happens.

So all I wanna say is that it’s alright to break that cycle to get some personal things figured out. The dynamics of our present work culture aren’t changing anytime soon so it’s up to you make the changes.

Go ahead and take a personal day to meetup with your buddy from high school. In the daily hustle it’s easy to forget why we work in the first place – to live a decent life.

So go ahead and take that trip you’ve been planning since your 1st day of college, your bosses will understand. Dedication to work is indeed necessary but it’s also critical to achieve a proper work-life balance.